I don’t get it. If I begin to pay Wise Patient a monthly membership fee, how exactly may I save money?

Participating in Wise Patient Direct may or may not save you money. Here are some ways that people have saved money using Direct Primary Care:

1. Decreased monthly health costs. If paired with a low premium, high deductible insurance plan, the premium money you save might be much greater than the monthly membership fee for primary care. Still, you will need to envision different scenarios of out-of-pocket costs for medical care you receive from parties other than Wise Patient Internal Medicine, PLLC.
2. Major discounts for common lab tests. Under the Wise Patient Direct model, we continue to negotiate substantial discounts from laboratories (and soon to come: imaging companies) for our Wise Patient Direct patients. As a result, some common lab fees can be multiple times lower than what the same lab would charge your insurance company (or you if they billed you directly). When we order labs for you in this way, we present you with an itemized cost at the time we draw your blood and charge the same credit card you have on file for your monthly DPC membership fee. Alternatively, some DPC patients choose to have their labs billed in the traditional way, from the laboratory to their health insurance company. We are fine doing that.
3. Less time away from work and family. Under the Wise Patient Direct model, you can optimize the amount of care we provide you via electronic means. Fewer trips to the clinic means less time away from work and family.
4. Fewer surprise bills from insurance companies. With Wise Patient Direct, you know up-front how much you are paying for primary care. No more guessing whether the office visit will be billed at a level 3, 4, or 5, if an appointment for a given topic will or won’t be covered under your insurance plan, or what your out-of-pocket cost will be for an office procedure such as an EKG, spirometry, or punch biopsy. Not knowing what something costs before you buy it (or sell it, in our case) is frustrating. Yet that is how insurance mediated primary care currently works!